My Dad singing with his cover band "Beach Road" in the 1970's
In April 2016, I wrote a blog entry entitled, "Finally - Dad. (Part 1)." I said that it was very difficult to write about my dad who died when I was fifteen but that eventually I would write more entries about him. So here we are, six years later, with Part 2. In Part 1, I wrote about my dad's love of Walt Whitman's poetry and said that he wrote his own version of Whitman's collection of poems, "Leaves of Grass," by changing the words and setting the poems to music. Here in Part 2, I would like to share a poem that I wrote years ago, "Lifedream," and the story behind it.
Even though my dad was a talented songwriter, his true love was singing. His favorite singer was Teddy Pendergrass whose albums he often played at family gatherings, exclaiming, "Listen how Teddy sings this note! Nobody can sing like Teddy!" This prompted teasing from my aunt who told him, "You talk about him like he's your friend! 'Hey Teddy, let's go outside and play ball!'" My dad loved Pendergrass, but he judged other singers very harshly, and I could never understand why. They all sounded good to me, and I figured that since they were on TV, they had to be good! I never had the courage to actually sing in front of my dad. Instead, I blared albums on my record player and sang along with my favorite singers at the time, Donna Summer and Diana Ross, behind the closed door of my bedroom. I'll never forget the thrill I had on a car ride with my mom on the way to applepicking when she mentioned that my dad told her he had heard me singing in my room, and if I studied, I had the potential of becoming a really good singer. My dad didn't throw singing compliments around lightly, so the joy I felt at that moment was monumental. I immediately enrolled in singing lessons and continued them even after he died. I knew singing was the closest I could be to him, and it was a way to make him proud of me. When I turned eighteen, I moved to Boston to study singing and songwriting at Berklee College of Music. I needed to know what truly made a singer good or bad. Otherwise, I feared I'd become one of those singers that my dad would have hated!
College life and living in the dorms were not kind to my voice. The stuffiness of the dorm rooms exacerbated my allergies, and the beer drinking and late nights roaming the halls screaming and being silly made my voice hoarse. At one point, I was limited to a three-note range. My voice teacher recommended an ear, nose and throat specialist to examine my vocal cords. The diagnosis wasn't good. I had the beginnings of vocal nodules, simply called "nodes," which are benign growths on the vocal cords that develop when people abuse their voices. The struggle to heal my voice was difficult and depressing. I stopped drinking beer and staying up late. I stopped singing and screaming in the hallways. But I kept on writing. The following poem, "Lifedream," is a metaphorical poem I wrote to my vocal cords, expressing my sadness and disappointment and my fear that my voice would never come back:
"Lifedream"
I will shelter you like a thin sheet of ice./Put you in a tiny box./Preserve you till I'm ready.
No, I'd never give you up./Never give up skating.
But you and I don't think alike./Never meant to hurt you./And up until the end of time,/I'll never give up skating.
But maybe I can't save the ice./My body crushed and crumbling through./If I can't live my life on ice,/I'll never love you true.
I will shelter you and hold you tight./Together we will move.
If I fall through this sheet of ice,/My life's dream I will lose.
Slowly, my vocal range came back. In fact, my voice teacher told me she had never seen anyone overcome vocal damage to the extent that I was able to with no outside medical treatment. But I still felt I would never be able to sing as well as my dad would have wanted me to. Anytime I had a late night or was run down, my sensitivity to hoarseness acted up. My voice teacher also told me that my speaking voice was harsh and very different from my singing voice. She said you must speak the same way that you sing but that trying to speak in a way that wasn't natural to me might change my personality. I didn't want to do that, and eventually, I just decided that if I couldn't sing as well as my dad, there was no use in singing at all. It all turned out okay though because I'm happy now writing novels. Plus, it's been beautiful to rediscover my poem and to remember those days when singing was so meaningful to me.
